Posted on 07/14/2002 4:20:41 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Edited on 07/14/2002 9:55:34 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
As many as 1 million Venezuelans took to the streets after former President Jimmy Carter left Caracas. They want their president, Hugo Chavez, to step down and move on. So much for Carter's peacekeeping mission.
This wasn't Cuba, where communist leader Fidel Castro orchestrated recent "protests" against any voter-led reforms to his 43-year-old revolutionary government. The people have spoken, Castro said, after pushing through a measure that dictates his government is "untouchable."
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
Venezuelan coup d'etat*** If the Americas are not again to be put in a position of having to restore in democracy's name a leader who in many ways has worked against democracy, the (OAS) charter's standards should be refined and expanded beyond the mere focus on elections. There is a good reason why the charter focuses on elections. There is a consensus on what constitutes a free and fair election so that standards can be relatively precise and evenly applied. But standards for free and fair elections are not the last word. There are other norms and standards that could be similarly developed that would strengthen democratic practice and could be formulated with precision. Mr. Chavez used the device of a referendum to extend his term of office and also to lift the ban on Venezuela's presidents holding consecutive terms of office.The possibility of a creeping "auto-coup," as employed by Alberto Fujimori in Peru 10 years ago, was evident. It should be unacceptable, as a general norm, for constitutional or electoral changes to directly benefit the incumbent in this way. To give the incumbent such an advantage is self-dealing, subverting the rule of law - and the guarantees and expectations that are at the heart of the democratic bargain between the electors and the elected. Such referenda cannot meet the standards for a free and fair election. It would have been a violation of democratic norms (as well as a violation of the U.S. Constitution) had President Clinton, or Ronald Reagan or Dwight Eisenhower, proposed a constitutional amendment to lift the two-term limit on U.S. presidents so that they could stay in office. Globally, the growing phenomena of leaders, whether democratically elected or not (as in Pakistan), extending their terms of office through referenda has a stultifying effect on democratic development because it is, in essence, undemocratic.***
"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. "--The US Supreme Court, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943.
LOL! It seems that Venezuelans are waking up! This is a good sign.
Thank you, John.
Elections are meaningless unless those who obtain office through them abide by the words they uttered before the votes for them were cast. Voters (at least those with a brain) vote for people who embody concepts that they embrace (not the candidates themselves).
That is part of what is so wrong with the American political system. The huge majority of American candidates voice those ideas which they know the American voter will accept, and then, once in office, they do as they please (most often the polar opposite of what they purported to stand for on the campaign trail). And (here’s the kicker) those who voted for them are too preoccupied with other, post-election pursuits to even notice the discrepancy (unless it hits them in the pocketbook, and even then only sometimes).
And the complicit media, nine times out of ten, will not find it within their realm of journalistic responsibility to alert the voters to the pre-election rhetoric/post-election behavior discrepancy. And, if the pocketbook thing is questioned, the media will invariably blame something other than the policies of the (lying) elected representatives for the financial blows that the electorate somehow senses, but can't quite identify the real source of.
Is it any wonder that America continues sinking into the socialist quicksand? The American voter has the attention span of a butterfly, and virtually no ability to connect dots. Elections have become mere formalities, and post-election accountability has been declared passé.
Unless people understand that they have certain rights which may not be violated by their government or voted away by their neighbors, dictatorship always follows .... snopercod
Legal methods aren't going to move statist control freaks. It might not take violence. I hope it doesn't. But it's going to take resistance -- including lawbreaking. It's going to take people saying, 'I ain't applyin' for your digital ID, ain't puttin' my data in your database, ain't registerin' my guns, ain't obeying your illegal regulations, ain't bein' nice to your thugs, ain't putting my children into your clutches, ain't feedin' your tax gobblin' beast one more dime' .... They get state permits to exercise rights .... Maybe you just decide to live your own life in freedom, no matter what barriers the controllers build in your path. That can be the hardest, most gutsy, action of all, these days .... When did we get to be so scared, anyway? So bloody compliant? On what day did we all decide to go along with the fiction that the government 'requires' obedience of us -- rather than that we require obedience of it? On what day did we decide freedom wasn't worth living for, as well as dying for? .... I don't really have much hope that we'll wake up in a free country someday. But at least we can make the job harder for those who want to control us. And even if that's all we achieve, at least we can live for a while in a spirit of freedom, instead of always cowering in fear or seething with frustration .... Clarie Wolfe
The court had it right in your West Virginia State Board of Educartion vs. Barnette decision, John. But what happened to the application of this ruling? The fact that fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote (or usurped via legislation or adjudication) seems to have been overlooked in the sixty years that have elapsed since the decision was handed down.
It's the concept (central to our founders, and their struggles, and their vision) of ‘inalienable’ (incapable of being alienated, surrendered or transferred) rights that the average American citizen has lost sight of. We have surrendered, and continue to surrender, those rights over which no government was meant to have control. And then we wonder why we feel so restricted; why we don’t seem to enjoy the fruits of our own labor; why our choices seem so narrow; why we feel increasingly fearful. The answer is that, through our lack of vigilance, we have allowed other men to steal from us our God-given freedoms. We have allowed other men to tell us that their position entitles them to preside over us in sacred areas in which no man was meant to preside over another.
The American experiment is just about at an end.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.